The Trendsetter

Conflict in fiction propels your plot forward. Without conflict - faced by the characters - your fiction is nothing but a summary about life amongst your characters. With conflict you make them come alive striving for what they yearn for and will do anything to achieve their goals. In order to make it interesting to the reader, your characters must face conflicts and the ending is either they get what they are looking for or they fail.

In my previous blog How to build conflict for your main characters, I gave an example about Anita, the main character in my short story, Antara Dua Kota (Between Two Cities) facing a conflict over whether to stay for the Summer in Paris or return to her home country. What type of conflict do you think she is facing?

There are three types of conflicts I can think of to make your plot interesting. You can develop intrapersonal conflict for your main character(s). In reality, we are face with internal conflicts all the time. For example, I don’t feel like writing and thinking of skipping writing for a day, yet, my inner self tells me to continue to write, otherwise I will not achieve my goal – which is to improve my writing skill and get published. You can transfer real life conflicts to your characters. The internal source of conflict can be due to guilt, jealously, attachment, choices, fear and many more.

The second conflict you can create for your characters is what I called interpersonal conflict. This means your characters are in conflict with other characters. The clashing of personalities between your main characters are an interpersonal type of conflict as identified in my blog titled How to create believable characters for your fiction. There are many types of interpersonal conflicts you can create for your main characters. Usually such conflicts are closely related to the theme of your fiction. For instance, it can be about loving each other, yet, it can get complicated because the other character still involved with someone else or in a love triangle, friendships, affairs, mother-daughter relationships, etc.

The third conflict is something to do with the environment that is beyond the control of the characters. The external conflict usually is about things like a natural disaster like perhaps an earthquake, fire, snowstorm or other major occurrence. You can create your characters that lost her husband in a plane crash and have difficulties in developing new relationships with other men. Usually this external conflict is not the ending of your plot, but as a way to push your character to the front in order to show the reader how he/she will maneuver to resolve this conflict.

You can create one, two or all three conflicts for your main characters. That is when they say ‘the plot thickens’. With all three types of conflicts combined together, you will create a rich and interesting plot.

Back to Anita, in Antara Dua Kota (Between Two Cities) she is facing both intrapersonal and interpersonal conflict. Anita is battling within herself - whether she should take a summer break or continue to work on her project. At the same time she is also getting angry with her agent who has chosen a photographer she is not familiar with. The cantankerous behavior is noticed by the photographer and he decides to cancel the next assignment with her. This makes her feel guilty and so she tries to correct her immature behavior.

In Something More by best selling author, Janet Dailey, the main character Luke, lost his wife and son when their house was engulfed in fire. He thought if he was there during the fire, he could save them. He carried the anger and guilt with him that makes it difficult for him to build a relationship with Angie, also the main protagonist in this novel. Luke faces all three types of conflicts – external, interpersonal and intrapersonal - that make this novel ‘a page turner’.

In concluding, creating interesting conflicts that depict the real life aspects of your characters make your readers identify themselves with your characters – the struggles and how he/she solves it. It is this type of experience readers look for when reading fiction.